The Third Year - April 10, 2014

As published in the White River Current - Thursday April 10, 2014

Welcome to the first issue of the third year of Ramblings.  For those new readers who aren’t familiar with this column, this is number 53 in a series of  my thoughts on certain subjects and memories of occurrences that happened long ago when I was just a lad growing up in the Ozarks.  I was born in Calico Rock, Arkansas, in the time of the great depression, the early thirties.  I have lived here all my life, with the exception of a seven year “mission trip” into southwest Missouri a few years ago.  I do not claim to be a writer or journalist. My meandering words are presented much in the same manner as I might carry on a conversation.  Ramblings is published every other week in the White River Current which is an important source of news for the Calico Rock community.  Most of these writings are done at one sitting at the computer keyboard.  I just sit down and start typing in the wandering style that I use and when I finish a page, I’m done for this time.  Since I do this for fun, I probably repeat myself.  I have refused to look back to earlier issues to see if I have written about some particular subject.  If I did that, it would be work, not fun.  So don’t tell me that you have heard “this one” before because you probably have.  By the way, you can archive all previous issues of Ramblings on the internet.  OK enough of that.  Starting with the next issue (in two weeks, that is) I plan to start a series on characters that I have known in my lifetime.  A few of these people are still with us but most have passed on.  Some you may remember, some you may not have heard of, but all passed through and affected my life in a small or great way.  It’s possible that you may remember these folks in a different way.  I hope you at least find this borderline interesting.  Well, March went out like a lamb and April was ushered in with a few new April Fool jokes.  A prank from my youth was to phone one of the local grocers and inquire if he had Prince Albert in a can.  If the answer was “yes” the grocer was told “why don’t you let him out?”  Prince Albert was a brand of tobacco that was popular with the “roll your own” group.  Anyway, for this time, a while back I mentioned birthdays coming up in March.  My birthday and spring both slipped by almost unnoticed.  Oh, I shouldn’t have said that; Brenda drove over from Springdale and spent the day with us.  She brought her mom her birthday gifts (Anita’s BD was four days earlier), but I guess she forgot mine.  She did, however, bring the fixings and cooked a delicious lunch for us.  Thanks, Brenda.  Ross and Ruby facetimed me and sang Happy Birthday and Ruby told me how much she loved me (have I bragged about my great granddaughter before?  So smart!  Only three months old and already talking and, fortunately, I can read lips).  Steve, Sara and Sam (son and grands) called.  Shelby  e-mailed a greeting.  Nephew Gene called.  Don & Maxine called and sang Happy BD.  So did Harold, but I was expecting that.  It’s a tradition.  You see, I catch up with him (in age) for ten days every year and I feign this deep depression which, almost miraculously, disappears ten days later when I call Harold and sing the BD song to him.  I also got several dozen wishes on Facebook and a few cards in the mail.  Looking back, maybe my birthday didn’t go unnoticed after all.  Thanks, everyone.  I apologize for the delay in acknowledging all the good wishes but you see I come by it naturally.  One of my dad’s favorite sayings was “some of these days.”  I guess I have adopted the adage “always put off until tomorrow what you might be able to do today.”  I may not be quoting this correctly, but you get the point.  The English word for this is, of course, procrastinate, and since I have discussed “words” several times in these articles, please allow me to ask a question or two.  Should the English language contain the word “crastinate” which could be defined as “performing an action” since procrastinate is defined as “delaying the performance of an action?”  Would the word “concrastinate” also be needed?  Confusing to say the least, but I think I have done my job here for this week.  Bye for now.